A CONCERNED CITIZEN
Special to the Lampoon
- I see things objectively. While I see where everyone’s coming from, the fact remains that I have a unique perspective which I get from my ability to detach myself from my experiences and circumstances. I’m aware of the world and acknowledge its myriad of problems, but I’m lucky enough to have the option of detaching myself from the fray and viewing the problem from a place of pure, objective reason. So feel free to join me.
- Social media is neither the time nor the place. Look. If you want to have this talk, that’s cool. Like I said, I see where you’re coming from. Please tag me if you have something you feel I should know, so that I can know it. But don’t tag me if you’re going to make me uncomfortable, or be too direct with your point. But also don’t subtweet me; that’s not nice. But also don’t call me out in public, because there’s a time and a place. Maybe the best place for this conversation is through a backandforth series of public editorials strawmanning the everloving crap out of each other.
- If you have something to say, you can say it to my face. No, seriously! Because conversations in private are always calm and rational. People are on their best behavior when nobody’s watching, the door is closed and no one is taking minutes of this meeting or can come to your defense. I know I have been unreceptive to your ideas in public, but if you’ll step 30 feet this way, into my office, the curse that makes me dismissive in public will lift, and I’ll be able to hear you. But please, remember to close the door.
- I always admit my own faults, so can we please just move on? Okay, okay, okay. I hear you. Yep. I’m with you — oppression doesn’t always look like it did in the 1960s. Right you are. Totally. And that thing you said about my not necessarily even having to do anything to be complicit in systems of oppression? And that thing about me benefitting from them? On point, man, on point. Now let’s move on, because change is incremental. And you know what else change is? Cultural. These things don’t happen overnight. I look at it this way: if you want a new bike (social equality), but you don’t have enough money (recognition of and efforts against social inequality), you’ve got to put that bike on layaway until you can afford it, right? And it’s not like you’re going to make enough money for a new bike overnight. You know? We can’t afford it right now. So defer that dream. You’ll have your turn. Think of the greater good.
- I am approachable. You can approach me, and I will let you approach me. I will listen while I nod and smile to indicate that I am listening. I might even thank you for your concern. You, on the other hand, are not approachable: you’re mean to me, and I’m a good person and I just feel attacked and hurt right now. I wish things weren’t this way but they just are, so I’m not even going to try.
Also, if there were a way you could bring solutions to me packaged in a way that downplays my role in the problem but emphasizes my role in the solution, that would be dope. Thanks so much for your time!